The continuing case of summer friendlies

They only seem to get more and more popular

A previous version of this article was originally published on July 4, 2012. It has been lightly edited and updated.

Summer friendlies in MLS are a strange thing. They seem a throwback to American sports in the 1920s, when exhibitions of all shapes and sizes were in vogue. Barnstorming tours crisscrossed the country, bringing daredevil airshows to the masses. Traveling performances, like horses jumping off of diving boards, where also popular. Sure, part of this was due to the fact that there was nothing else to do back then, but traveling shows were a key part of the American experience.

Out of the major American sports, soccer is currently the only one that has an exhibition season against teams from other leagues. MLS has long promoted these matches as a way to grow the game in the States, and they are also good money makers for MLS and SUM (which isn’t a bad thing in of itself). There are issues such as the fact that other countries don’t have the same level of high quality opponents that there are in soccer, but I can’t help think that there’s something more.

I have no problem with the big matches, like the All-Star game or the top teams in the world playing friendlies in the summer. However, I would rather my team focus on anything else than play teams like Aston Villa, Montpellier, or St. Pauli (all teams playing in the US this summer) in the middle of an already compressed MLS schedule. If we really wanted to build soccer in the United States, what about a barnstorming tour of MLS teams against lower level teams? Might that bring out more excitement about American soccer? Probably not, but I think we have moved past the traditional summer friendly.